Denver Broncos: Why doesn’t NFL postpone game vs. Saints?
As of now, the game between the Denver Broncos and New Orleans Saints is still a go.
Will that change before kickoff on Sunday, which is scheduled for 2:05 pm mountain time? That remains to be seen, but it’s hard to understand why the league wouldn’t move the game.
The Broncos will not have any of their four quarterbacks available for this game. Nope, not a single one of them. Instead, the team currently plans to start Kendall Hinton, a wide receiver on the practice squad with a touch of experience in college as a quarterback.
That’s not good.
The league has moved games around all season. In fact, the league moved around the Broncos game against the New England Patriots earlier this year after Cam Newton tested positive for COVID-19.
Earlier this week, the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens, originally scheduled for Thanksgiving night, was moved to this Tuesday following an outbreak within the Ravens’ organization.
In each of those situations (and there are many more examples), the teams that have had there games moved to a different date have had much less facing them than the Broncos currently do. The team literally doesn’t have a quarterback, but the league is fine with moving forward wiith the game?
It just seems odd.
But the NFL still has time to reassess this situation and ask itself if it really is a good idea to have a team, on less than 24 hours notice, go out without the most important position on the team?
But what if you’re the Saints? You have traveled to Denver as scheduled and you are ready to play the game as scheduled. The Saints will feel as though they have done nothing wrong and the game should go on as scheduled. It’s hard to argue with that as well.
But the Broncos were ready to play the Patriots when that game was moved and their bye week was essentially lost. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as though the league has been consistent in postponing these games.
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The Broncos have as big of a gripe as perhaps any team has had this season. They don’t have a quarterback because Drew Lock, Brett Rypien and Blake Bortles were around Jeff Driskel, who received a positive test result, and they were deemed to be a risk due to their close contact with him.
Perhaps the league feels the Broncos could have prevented this and handled it better and that’s why it is not willing to move this game. This tweet from ESPN’s Adam Schefter suggested that the Broncos had a choice to either find an emergency quarterback or forfeit the game.
Things could get very ugly for the Broncos in this one as they will be facing one of the NFC’s best teams which is riding a seven-game winning streak. They’ll have to do that with a player who hasn’t thrown a pass in a competitive football game since 2018 and hasn’t played quarterback full time in five years.
To that, the league, at least for now, says “good luck”.